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How the AFP bungled the Michael Cranston investigation

The story that can now be told is of a catastrophic misunderstanding, if not downright incompetence, by investigators who believed that Cranston had invented a telephone call to cover an intervention on behalf of his son Adam.

It came about because In the frantic days before AFP officers confronted Michael Cranston in a Surfers Paradise car park, they failed to make a simple check: what phone calls he had made or received from both his mobile and landline telephones.

That initial mistake was then compounded. A forensic examination of the documents that AFP officers used to build their case against Michael Cranston shows a trail of errors from the period before he was charged until days before his trial.

‘The worst day of my life’

Yet none of this was evident while senior AFP officers had their moment in the media limelight on May 18, 2017.